Life and career

Early years

García Lorca was born on 5 June 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town a few miles west of Granada, southern Spain.[9] His father, Federico García Rodríguez, was a prosperous landowner with a farm in the fertile vega (valley) surrounding Granada and a comfortable villa in the heart of the city. García Rodríguez saw his fortunes rise with a boom in the sugar industry. García Lorca's mother, Vicenta Lorca Romero, was a teacher. After Fuente Vaqueros, the family moved in 1905 to the nearby town of Valderrubio (at the time named Asquerosa). In 1909, when the boy was 11, his family moved to the regional capital of Granada, where there was the equivalent of a high school; their best known residence there is the summer home called the Huerta de San Vicente, on what were then the outskirts of the city of Granada. For the rest of his life, he maintained the importance of living close to the natural world, praising his upbringing in the country.[9] All three of these homes—Fuente Vaqueros, Valderrubio, and Huerta de San Vicente—are today museums.[10][11][12]

In 1915, after graduating from secondary school, García Lorca attended the University of Granada. During this time his studies included law, literature and composition. Throughout his adolescence he felt a deeper affinity for music than for literature. When he was 11 years old, he began six years of piano lessons with Antonio Segura Mesa, a harmony teacher in the local conservatory and a composer. It was Segura who inspired Federico's dream of developing a career in music.[13] His first artistic inspirations arose from the scores of Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven.[13] Later, with his friendship with composer Manuel de Falla, Spanish folklore became his muse. García Lorca did not begin a career in writing until Segura died in 1916, and his first prose works such as "Nocturne", "Ballade" and "Sonata" drew on musical forms.[14] His milieu of young artists gathered in El Rinconcillo at the cafe Alameda in Granada. During 1916 and 1917, García Lorca traveled throughout Castile, León, and Galicia, in northern Spain, with a professor of his university, who also encouraged him to write his first book, Impresiones y paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes – printed at his father's expense in 1918). Fernando de los Rios persuaded García Lorca's parents to let him move to the progressive, Oxbridge-inspired Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid in 1919, while nominally attending classes at the University of Madrid.[14]

As a young writer

Huerta de San Vicente, summer home of Lorca's family in Granada, Spain, now a museum

At the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, García Lorca befriended Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and many other creative artists who were, or would become, influential across Spain.[14] He was taken under the wing of the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, becoming close to playwright Eduardo Marquina and Gregorio Martínez Sierra, the Director of Madrid's Teatro Eslava.[14] In 1919–20, at Sierra's invitation, he wrote and staged his first play, The Butterfly's Evil Spell. It was a verse play dramatising the impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, with a supporting cast of other insects; it was laughed off the stage by an unappreciative public after only four performances and influenced García Lorca's attitude to the theatre-going public for the rest of his career. He would later claim that Mariana Pineda, written in 1927, was, in fact, his first play. During the time at the Residencia de Estudiantes, he pursued degrees in law and philosophy, though he had more interest in writing than study.[14]

García Lorca's first book of poems was published in 1921, collecting work written from 1918 and selected with the help of his brother Francisco (nicknamed Paquito). They concern the themes of religious faith, isolation and nature that had filled his prose reflections.[15] Early in 1922 at Granada García Lorca joined the composer Manuel de Falla in order to promote the Concurso de Cante Jondo, a festival dedicated to enhance flamenco performance. The year before Lorca had begun to write his Poema del cante jondo ("Poem of the Deep Song", not published until 1931), so he naturally composed an essay on the art of flamenco,[16] and began to speak publicly in support of the Concurso. At the music festival in June he met the celebrated Manuel Torre, a flamenco cantaor. The next year in Granada he also collaborated with Falla and others on the musical production of a play for children, adapted by Lorca from an Andalucian story.[b][17] Inspired by the same structural form of sequence as "Deep song", his collection Suites (1923) was never finished and not published until 1983.[15]

Over the next few years, García Lorca became increasingly involved in Spain's avant-garde. He published a poetry collection called Canciones (Songs), although it did not contain songs in the usual sense. Shortly after, Lorca was invited to exhibit a series of drawings at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, from 25 June – 2 July 1927.[18] Lorca's sketches were a blend of popular and avant-garde styles, complementing Canción. Both his poetry and drawings reflected the influence of traditional Andalusian motifs, Cubist syntax, and a preoccupation with sexual identity. Several drawings consisted of superimposed dreamlike faces (or shadows). He later described the double faces as self-portraits, showing "man's capacity for crying as well as winning", inline with his conviction that sorrow and joy were inseparable, just as life and death.[19]

Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928), part of his Cancion series, became his best known book of poetry.[20] It was a highly stylised imitation of the ballads and poems that were still being told throughout the Spanish countryside. García Lorca describes the work as a "carved altar piece" of Andalusia with "gypsies, horses, archangels, planets, its Jewish and Roman breezes, rivers, crimes, the everyday touch of the smuggler and the celestial note of the naked children of Córdoba. A book that hardly expresses visible Andalusia at all, but where the hidden Andalusia trembles".[20] In 1928, the book brought him fame across Spain and the Hispanic world, and it was only much later that he gained notability as a playwright. For the rest of his life, the writer would search for the elements of Andaluce culture, trying to find its essence without resorting to the "picturesque" or the cliched use of "local colour".[21]

His second play, Mariana Pineda, with stage settings by Salvador Dalí, opened to great acclaim in Barcelona in 1927.[14] In 1926, García Lorca wrote the play The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife, which would not be shown until the early 1930s. It was a farce about fantasy, based on the relationship between a flirtatious, petulant wife and a hen-pecked shoemaker.

Postcard from Lorca and Dalí to Antonio de Luna, signed "Federico." "Dear Antonito: In the midst of a delicious ambience of sea, phonographs and cubist paintings I greet you and I hug you. Dalí and I are preparing something that will be 'moll bé.' Something 'moll bonic.' Without realizing it, I have deposited myself in the Catalan. Goodbye Antonio. Say hello to your father. And salute yourself with my finest unalterable friendship. You've seen what they've done with Paquito! (Silence)" Above, penned by Dalí: "Greetings from Salvador Dalí"

From 1925 to 1928, he was passionately involved with Dalí.[22] Although Dali's friendship with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion,[c] Dalí rejected the erotic advances of the poet.[23] With the success of "Gypsy Ballads", came an estrangement from Dalí and the breakdown of a love affair with sculptor Emilio Aladrén Perojo. These brought on an increasing depression, a situation exacerbated by his anguish over his homosexuality. He felt he was trapped between the persona of the successful author, which he was forced to maintain in public, and the tortured, authentic self, which he could acknowledge only in private. He also had the sense that he was being pigeon-holed as a "gypsy poet". He wrote: "The gypsies are a theme. And nothing more. I could just as well be a poet of sewing needles or hydraulic landscapes. Besides, this gypsyism gives me the appearance of an uncultured, ignorant and primitive poet that you know very well I'm not. I don't want to be typecast".[21] Growing estrangement between García Lorca and his closest friends reached its climax when surrealists Dalí and Luis Buñuel collaborated on their 1929 film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). García Lorca interpreted it, perhaps erroneously, as a vicious attack upon himself.[24] At this time Dalí also met his future wife Gala. Aware of these problems (though not perhaps of their causes), García Lorca's family arranged for him to make a lengthy visit to the United States in 1929–30.

In June 1929, García Lorca travelled to the US with Fernando de los Rios on the RMS Olympic, a sister liner to the RMS Titanic.[25] They stayed mostly in New York City, where Rios started a lecture tour and García Lorca enrolled at Columbia University School of General Studies, funded by his parents. He studied English but, as before, was more absorbed by writing than study. He also spent time in Vermont and later in Havana, Cuba. His collection Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York, published posthumously in 1942) explores alienation and isolation through some graphically experimental poetic techniques and was influenced by the Wall Street crash which he personally witnessed. This condemnation of urban capitalist society and materialistic modernity was a sharp departure from his earlier work and label as a folklorist.[25] His play of this time, El público (The Public), was not published until the late 1970s and has never been published in its entirety, the complete manuscript apparently lost. However, the Hispanic Society of America in New York City retains several of his personal letters.[26][27]

The Second Republic

García Lorca's return to Spain in 1930 coincided with the fall of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the establishment of the liberal, leftist Second Spanish Republic.[25] In 1931, García Lorca was appointed director of a student theatre company, Teatro Universitario La Barraca (The Shack). It was funded by the Second Republic's Ministry of Education, and it was charged with touring Spain's rural areas in order to introduce audiences to classical Spanish theatre free of charge. With a portable stage and little equipment, they sought to bring theatre to people who had never seen any, with García Lorca directing as well as acting. He commented: "Outside of Madrid, the theatre, which is in its very essence a part of the life of the people, is almost dead, and the people suffer accordingly, as they would if they had lost their two eyes, or ears, or a sense of taste. We [La Barraca] are going to give it back to them".[25] His experiences traveling through impoverished rural Spain and New York (particularly amongst the disenfranchised African-American population), transformed him into a passionate advocate of the theatre of social action.[25] He wrote "The theatre is a school of weeping and of laughter, a free forum, where men can question norms that are outmoded or mistaken and explain with living example the eternal norms of the human heart".[25]

While touring with La Barraca, García Lorca wrote his now best-known plays, the rural trilogy of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, which all rebelled against the norms of bourgeois Spanish society.[25] He called for a rediscovery of the roots of European theatre and the questioning of comfortable conventions such as the popular drawing-room comedies of the time. His work challenged the accepted role of women in society and explored taboo issues of homoeroticism and class. García Lorca wrote little poetry in this last period of his life, declaring in 1936, "theatre is poetry that rises from the book and becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair." [28]

Travelling to Buenos Aires in 1933 to give lectures and direct the Argentine premiere of Blood Wedding, García Lorca spoke of his distilled theories on artistic creation and performance in the famous lecture Play and Theory of the Duende. This attempted to define a schema of artistic inspiration, arguing that great art depends upon a vivid awareness of death, connection with a nation's soil, and an acknowledgment of the limitations of reason.[28][29]

As well as returning to the classical roots of theatre, García Lorca also turned to traditional forms in poetry. His last poetic work, Sonetos de amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love, 1936), was long thought to have been inspired by his passion for Rafael Rodríguez Rapun, secretary of La Barraca. Documents and mementos revealed in 2012 suggest that the actual inspiration was Juan Ramírez de Lucas, a 19-year-old with whom Lorca hoped to emigrate to Mexico.[30] The love sonnets are inspired by the 16th-century poet San Juan de la Cruz.[31] La Barraca's subsidy was cut in half by the rightist government elected in 1934, and its last performance was given in April 1936.

Lorca spent summers at the Huerta de San Vicente from 1926 to 1936. Here he wrote, totally or in part, some of his major works, among them When Five Years Pass (Así que pasen cinco años) (1931), Blood Wedding (1932), Yerma (1934) and Diván del Tamarit (1931–1936). The poet lived in the Huerta de San Vicente in the days just before his arrest and assassination in August 1936.[32]

Although García Lorca's drawings do not often receive attention, he was also a talented artist.[33][34]

Assassination

Political and social tensions had greatly intensified after the murder of prominent monarchist and anti-Popular Front spokesman José Calvo Sotelo by Republican Assault Guards (Guardias de asalto).[35] García Lorca knew that he would be suspect to the rising right-wing for his outspoken socialist views.[31] Granada was so tumultuous that it had not had a mayor for months; no one dared accept the job. When Lorca's brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, agreed to accept the position, he was assassinated within a week. On the same day he was shot, 18 August, Lorca was arrested.[36]

It is thought that García Lorca was shot and killed by Nationalist militia[37][38] on 19 August 1936.[39] The author Ian Gibson in his book The Assassination of García Lorca alleges that he was shot with three others (Joaquín Arcollas Cabezas, Francisco Galadí Melgar and Dióscoro Galindo González) at a place known as the Fuente Grande ('Great Spring') which is on the road between Víznar and Alfacar.[40] Police reports released by radio station Cadena SER in April 2015 conclude that Lorca was executed by fascist forces. The Franco-era report, dated 9 July 1965, describes the writer as a "socialist" and "freemason belonging to the Alhambra lodge", who engaged in "homosexual and abnormal practices".[41][42][43]

Significant controversy exists about the motives and details of Lorca's murder. Personal, non-political motives have been suggested. García Lorca's biographer, Stainton, states that his killers made remarks about his sexual orientation, suggesting that it played a role in his death.[44]Ian Gibson suggests that García Lorca's assassination was part of a campaign of mass killings intended to eliminate supporters of the MarxistPopular Front.[36] However, Gibson proposes that rivalry between the right-wing Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) and the fascist Falange was a major factor in Lorca's death. Former CEDA Parliamentary Deputy Ramón Ruiz Alonso arrested García Lorca at the Rosales's home, and was the one responsible for the original denunciation that led to the arrest warrant being issued.

It has been argued that García Lorca was apolitical and had many friends in both Republican and Nationalist camps. Gibson disputes this in his 1978 book about the poet's death.[36] He cites, for example, Mundo Obrero's published manifesto, which Lorca later signed, and alleges that Lorca was an active supporter of the Popular Front.[45] Lorca read this manifesto out loud at a banquet in honour of fellow poet Rafael Alberti on 9 February 1936.

Many anti-communists were sympathetic to Lorca or assisted him. In the days before his arrest he found shelter in the house of the artist and leading Falange member Luis Rosales. Indeed, evidence suggests that Rosales was very nearly shot as well by the Civil Governor Valdés for helping García Lorca. Poet Gabriel Celaya wrote in his memoirs that he once found García Lorca in the company of Falangist José Maria Aizpurua. Celaya further wrote that Lorca dined every Friday with Falangist founder and leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera.[46] On 11 March 1937 an article appeared in the Falangist press denouncing the murder and lionizing García Lorca; the article opened: "The finest poet of Imperial Spain has been assassinated."[47] Jean-Louis Schonberg also put forward the 'homosexual jealousy' theory.[48] The dossier on the murder, compiled at Franco's request and referred to by Gibson and others, has yet to surface. The first published account of an attempt to locate Lorca's grave can be found in British traveller and Hispanist Gerald Brenan's book The Face of Spain.[49] Despite early attempts such as Brenan's in 1949, the site remained undiscovered throughout the Franco era.

Search for remains

The site of the excavation as it was in 1999

In 2008, a Spanish judge opened an investigation into Lorca's death. The García Lorca family eventually dropped objections to the excavation of a potential gravesite near Alfacar, but no human remains were found.[50][51] The investigation was eventually dropped. A further investigation was begun in 2016, with no result. [52]

In late October 2009, a team of archaeologists and historians from the University of Granada began excavations outside Alfacar.[53] The site was identified three decades previously by a man who claimed to have helped dig Lorca's grave.[54][55] Lorca was thought to be buried with at least three other men beside a winding mountain road that connects the villages of Víznar and Alfacar.[56]

The excavations began at the request of another victim's family.[57] Following a long-standing objection, the Lorca family also gave their permission.[57] In October 2009 Francisco Espínola, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry of the Andalusian regional government, said that after years of pressure García Lorca's body would "be exhumed in a matter of weeks".[58] Lorca's relatives, who had initially opposed an exhumation, said they might provide a DNA sample in order to identify his remains.[57]

In late November 2009, after two weeks of excavating the site, organic material believed to be human bones was recovered. The remains were taken to the University of Granada for examination.[59] But in mid-December 2009, doubts were raised as to whether the poet's remains would be found.[60] The dig produced "not one bone, item of clothing or bullet shell", said Begoña Álvarez, justice minister of Andalucia. She added, "the soil was only 40cm (16in) deep, making it too shallow for a grave".[61][62] The failed excavation cost €70,000.[63]

In January 2012, a local historian, Miguel Caballero Pérez, author of "The last 13 hours of García Lorca",[64] applied for permission to excavate another area less than half a kilometre from the site, where he believes Lorca's remains are located.[65]

Claims in 2016, by Stephen Roberts, an associate professor in Spanish literature at Nottingham University, and others that the poet's body was buried in a well in Alfacar have not been substantiated.[66]

Censorship

Francisco Franco's Falangist regime placed a general ban on García Lorca's work, which was not rescinded until 1953. That year, a (censored) Obras completas (Complete Works) was released. Following this, Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba were successfully played on the main Spanish stages. Obras completas did not include his late heavily homoerotic Sonnets of Dark Love, written in November 1935 and shared only with close friends. They were lost until 1983/4 when they were finally published in draft form. (No final manuscripts have ever been found.) It was only after Franco's death that García Lorca's life and death could be openly discussed in Spain. This was due not only to political censorship, but also to the reluctance of the García Lorca family to allow publication of unfinished poems and plays prior to the publication of a critical edition of his works.

South African Roman Catholic poet Roy Campbell, who enthusiastically supported the Nationalists both during and after the Civil War, later produced acclaimed translations of Lorca's work. In his poem, The Martyrdom of F. Garcia Lorca, Campbell wrote,

Not only did he lose his life
By shots assassinated:
But with a hammer and a knife
Was after that
– translated.[67]

Memorials

In Granada, the city of his birth, the Parque Federico García Lorca is dedicated to his memory and includes the Huerta de San Vicente, the Lorca family summer home, opened as a museum in 1995. The grounds, including nearly two hectares of land, the two adjoining houses, works of art, and the original furnishings have been preserved.[68] There is a new statue of Lorca on the Avenida de la Constitución in the city center, and a new cultural center bearing his name is currently under construction and will play a major role in preserving and disseminating his works.

The Parque Federico García Lorca, in Alfacar, is near Fuente Grande; in 2009 excavations in it failed to locate Lorca's body. Close to the olive tree indicated by some as marking the location of the grave, there is a stone memorial to Federico García Lorca and all other victims of the Civil War, 1936–39. Flowers are laid at the memorial every year on the anniversary of his death, and a commemorative event including music and readings of the poet's works is held every year in the park to mark the anniversary. On 17 August 2011, to remember the 75th anniversary of Lorca's assassination and to celebrate his life and legacy, this event included dance, song, poetry and dramatic readings and attracted hundreds of spectators.

At the Barranco de Viznar, between Viznar and Alfacar, there is a memorial stone bearing the words "Lorca eran todos, 18-8-2002" ("All were Lorca"). The Barranco de Viznar is the site of mass graves and has been proposed as another possible location of the poet's remains.

García Lorca is honored by a statue prominently located in Madrid's Plaza de Santa Ana. Political philosopher David Crocker reports that "the statue, at least, is still an emblem of the contested past: each day, the Left puts a red kerchief on the neck of the statue, and someone from the Right comes later to take it off."[69]

The Fundación Federico García Lorca, directed by Lorca's niece Laura García Lorca, sponsors the celebration and dissemination of the writer's work and is currently building the Centro Federico García Lorca in Madrid. The Lorca family deposited all Federico documents with the foundation, which holds them on their behalf.[70]

In the Hotel Castelar in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Lorca lived for six months in 1933, the room where he lived has been kept as a shrine and contains original writings and drawings of his.

List of major works

Poetry collections

Impresiones y paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes 1918)

Libro de poemas (Book of Poems 1921)

Poema del cante jondo (Poem of Deep Song; written in 1921 but not published until 1931)

Suites (written between 1920 and 1923, published posthumously in 1983)

Canciones (Songs written between 1921 and 1924, published in 1927)

Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads 1928)

Odes (written 1928)

Poeta en Nueva York (written 1930 – published posthumously in 1940, first translation into English as Poet in New York 1940)[71]

See also

Notes

^According to Spanish naming customs, a person usually uses their father's surname as their main surname. As García is a very widely used name, García Lorca is often referred to by his mother's less-common surname, Lorca. See, for example, "Translating Lorca". New Statesman (UK). 10 November 2008. (A typical example of an article in English where is used "Lorca" in the headline and in most of the text, and "Federico García Lorca" is also stated in full.) Spanish conventions require his name to be listed under "G".

^Encyclopædia Britannica: "From 1925 to 1928, García Lorca was passionately involved with Salvador Dalí. The intensity of their relationship led García Lorca to acknowledge, if not entirely accept, his own homosexuality."

^Bosquet, Alain, Conversations with Dalí, 1969. p. 19–20. (PDF format) (of García Lorca) 'S.D.: He was homosexual, as everyone knows, and madly in love with me. He tried to screw me twice... I was extremely annoyed, because I wasn't homosexual, and I wasn't interested in giving in. Besides, it hurts. So nothing came of it. But I felt awfully flattered vis-à-vis the prestige. Deep down I felt that he was a great poet and that I owe him a tiny bit of the Divine Dalí's asshole.'

Ainadamar (which means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic) is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The Spanish-language libretto is by American playwright David Henry Hwang. It premiered in Tanglewood on 10 August 2003 and, after major revisions, the new version given its premiere at the Santa Fe Opera on 30 July 2005.

The opera tells the story of playwright Federico García Lorca and his lover and muse, Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu. A unique aspect of this opera is that the part of male Lorca is a breeches role performed by a woman. Subtitled "an Opera in Three Images," Ainadamar is told in reverse in a series of flashbacks, and involves Lorca's opposition to the Falange, accusations of homosexuality, and his subsequent murder.

Air Andalucia was a low-cost airline based in Granada, Spain. It was a start-up airline intending to operate domestic services, as well as services to Europe. Its main base was Federico García Lorca Airport, Granada.

Blood Wedding (Spanish: Bodas de sangre) is a tragedy by Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written in 1932 and first performed at Teatro Beatriz in Madrid in March 1933, then later that year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Theatre critics often group Blood Wedding with Lorca's Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba as the "rural trilogy". Lorca's planned "trilogy of the Spanish earth" remained unfinished at the time of his death, as he did not include The House of Bernarda Alba in this group of works.

The Colegio Español Federico García Lorca (French: Ecole Espagnole "Federico García Lorca") is a Spanish government-operated school for children from 3 to 12 years old in Paris, France that teaches in Spanish language, French language and English language. It is located at 53 Rue de la Pompe in the 16th arrondissement. It is affiliated to the institute Liceo Español Luis Buñuel, in the Paris area.

As of the 2015-2016 school year, 79.6% of the school's 221 students were Spanish nationals.

Doña Rosita the Spinster (Spanish: Doña Rosita la soltera) is a period play by the 20th-century Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It is subtitled "or The Language of the Flowers" and described as "a poem of 1900 Granada, divided into various gardens, with scenes of song and dance". It was written in 1935 and first performed in the same year.

"The theme of the play", suggests Federico García Lorca, "is the passage of time" (which Lorca had developed in a different form in his experimental surrealist play When Five Years Pass in 1931). Doña Rosita is a young woman who falls in love with a man who is called to South America to join his parents. He swears to return and Rosita waits, but learns that he has married someone else. Lorca portrays what he called "the grotesque treatment of women" in Spain. The action is set in Granada, Spain in three different years, portraying the bourgeois life of the 1880s and the social modernization and beginning of World War I of the early 1900s. Lorca draws parallels between Doña Rosita’s life and these historic periods, beginning with the vitality of her youth, the attainment of maturity, and finally the loss of all hope.

The key moment in the play occurs when a young relative addresses Rosita as Doña Rosita. This form of address signals her change of status.

Federico García Lorca Granada-Jaén Airport (IATA: GRX, ICAO: LEGR), also known as Granada Airport, is the airport serving the province and city of Granada, in Spain, although it has Jaén in its name. The airport is located near to Chauchina and Santa Fe, about 9.4 miles (15 km) west of Granada and 62.5 miles (100 km) south of Jaén.

Construction of the airport began in 1970 and it opened as Aeropuerto de Granada in 1972. On June 13, 2006 it was officially named after the poet Federico García Lorca, born near Granada.

Fuente Vaqueros is a farming village in the province of Granada, Spain. It lies 17 km west of the city of Granada. Its population was recorded in 2005 as 4,590. The principal crops are asparagus, olives and apples.

The village is famous as the birthplace of the poet Federico García Lorca. His birthplace is now a museum, the Museo Casa Natal Federico García Lorca.

The municipality includes the population centers of Fuente Vaqueros, La Paz, and a small part of Pedro Ruiz, located between the municipal border of Fuente Vaqueros and Santa Fe. In addition there was the village of El Martinete, an old flour mill of which only its ruins are preserved. In this town was born the most important Spanish poet of the 20th century: Federico García Lorca, whose figure is the main tourist and cultural claim of the town.

Little Ashes is a 2008 Spanish-British drama film set against the backdrop of Spain during the 1920s and 1930s, as three of the era's most creative young talents meet at university and set off on a course to change their world. Luis Buñuel watches helplessly as the friendship between surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and the poet Federico García Lorca develops into a love affair.

Little Ashes won the GLAAD Media Award for "Outstanding Film - Limited Release" during the 21st GLAAD Media Awards.

Mariana Pineda is a play by the Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca. It is based on the life of Mariana de Pineda Muñoz, whose opposition to Ferdinand VII had become part of the folklore of Granada. The play was written between 1923 and 1925 and was first performed in June 1927 at the Teatre Goya in Barcelona. That production was directed by García Lorca, with scenic design and costumes by Salvador Dalí, and was performed by the company of Margarida Xirgu. The play received its Madrid première that October, at the Teatro Fontalba.In contrast to García Lorca's first play, The Butterfly's Evil Spell, which was first performed in 1920 but which closed after only four performances, Mariana Pineda was a success. Consequently, García Lorca often claimed that Mariana Pineda was his first play.

The play figures prominently in the opera Ainadamar (2003) by Osvaldo Golijov.

"Take This Waltz" is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, originally released as part of the 1986 Federico García Lorca tribute album Poet in New York (Poeta en Nueva York) and as a single.

The song was later included in Cohen's 1988 studio album I'm Your Man, in a slightly re-arranged version (with addition of violin and Jennifer Warnes's duet vocals, both absent from the 1986 version).

The song's lyrics are a loose translation, into English, of the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" (Little Viennese Waltz) by the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (one of Cohen's favorite poets). The poem was first published in Lorca's seminal book Poeta en Nueva York.

The Billy-Club Puppets (Los Títeres de Cachiporra) is a play for puppet theatre by the twentieth-century Spanish playwright Federico García Lorca. It was written between 1922 and 1925.It is about a beautiful heroine named Rosita who falls in love with a poor boy named Cocoliche, but has to marry Don Cristobal, a rich old, lazy lump with a big billy club. Meanwhile, there are bar fights, some mean smugglers, and Figaro and Wearisome discover a deep, dark secret about Don Cristobal. He gave it the subtitle "Tragi-comedy of Don Cristóbal and Miss Rosita: A Guignolesque farce in six scenes and an announcement." Don Cristóbal is a kind of Punch character (which itself was based on Pulcinella), who also appears in García Lorca's other, later puppet play, The Puppet Play of Don Cristóbal (written in 1931).

The Butterfly's Evil Spell (El maleficio de la mariposa) was the first play by the twentieth-century Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca.A symbolist work drawing inspiration from Yeats and Maeterlinck, especially the latter's The Blue Bird (1905), Lorca's play deals with an injured butterfly, temporarily stranded amongst other insects, that flies away despite a cockroach's love for her.Written at the invitation of impresario Gregorio Martínez Sierra, it was first staged at Madrid's Teatro Eslava on 22 March 1920 with ballet dancer Encarnación López Júlvez, called "La Argentinita", as the Butterfly, and Catalina Bárcena as the Cockroach. It was not well received by the public and was cancelled after only four performances. Later García Lorca would claim on various occasions that Mariana Pineda (1927) was his first play.

Several aspects of the style and thematic content of The Butterfly's Evil Spell became distinguishing features of Lorca's mature drama: the exploration of symbolist stylization and non-naturalism, the incorporation of different art forms including music and ballet, bold attention to details of staging, and familiar themes such as frustrated love and the imminence of death.

The House of Bernarda Alba (Spanish: La casa de Bernarda Alba) is a play by the Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. Commentators have often grouped it with Blood Wedding and Yerma as a "rural trilogy". Lorca did not include it in his plan for a "trilogy of the Spanish land" (which remained unfinished at the time of his murder).Lorca described the play in its subtitle as a drama of women in the villages of Spain. The House of Bernarda Alba was Lorca's last play, completed on 19 June 1936, two months before Lorca's death during the Spanish Civil War. The play was first performed on 8 March 1945 at the Avenida Theatre in Buenos Aires. The play centers on the events of a house in Andalusia during a period of mourning, in which Bernarda Alba (aged 60) wields total control over her five daughters Angustias (39 years old), Magdalena (30), Amelia (27), Martirio, (24), and Adela (20). The housekeeper (La Poncia) and Bernarda's elderly mother (María Josefa) also live there.

The deliberate exclusion of any male character from the action helps build up the high level of sexual tension that is present throughout the play. Pepe "el Romano", the love interest of Bernarda's daughters and suitor of Angustias, never appears on stage. The play explores themes of repression, passion, and conformity, and inspects the effects of men upon women.

The Public (El público), also known as The Audience, is a play by the twentieth-century Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written between 1929 and 1930. The two complete manuscripts which once existed have not been found, and may be lost. All that is known is an earlier draft, missing an act. It remained unpublished until 1978 and did not receive its first professional theatrical production until 1986. The world premiere of the play was directed by Victoria Espinosa on 15 February 1978 at the University of Puerto Rico.

The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife (La zapatera prodigiosa), also known as The Shoemaker's Wonderful Wife and The Shoemaker's Prosperous Wife, is a play by the twentieth-century Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca. It was written between 1926 and 1930, and first performed in 1930.

The play tells the story of a volatile relationship between a married couple, a 53-year-old shoemaker and his 18-year-old wife. The story follows the wife's struggle against her husband, the mayor, neighbours, suitors, and a "boy". The shoemaker and his wife are shunned in their society because they are different. The shoemaker leaves the wife. She is very sad and sorry. The mayor, young man in the sash and young man in the hat all swoop in as soon as the shoemaker leaves, trying to woo her. They all fail miserably. The wife stays loyal to the shoemaker. She has to open a cafe so that she has enough money to live on. The Shoemaker, tired of a life on the road, is sorry and comes back disguised as a puppeteer. He tells the wife he is sorry and she accepts him back happily and warmly.

The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife features a poem, recited by the Shoemaker when disguised as a puppet-master. The poem provides a condensed version of the story of The Shoemaker's life.

Poetry and novels based on Lorca

Poetry and novels based on García Lorca

Greek surrealist poet and painter Nikos Engonopoulos wrote the poem: News on the death of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca on the 19th of August 1936 in the ditch of Camino de la Fuente, a poem that juxtaposes the actual death of a poet and the symbolic death of poets that are depreciated by their contemporaries.

Greek poet Nikos Kavvadias's poem Federico García Lorca, in Kavvadias' Marabu collection, is dedicated to the memory of García Lorca and juxtaposes his death with war crimes in the village of Distomo, Greece, and in Kessariani in Athens, where the Nazis executed over two hundred people in each city.

Harold Norse has a poem, We Bumped Off Your Friend the Poet, inspired by a review of Ian Gibson'sDeath of Lorca. The poem first appeared in Hotel Nirvana,[73] and more recently in In the Hub of the Fiery Force, Collected Poems of Harold Norse 1934–2003[74]

The Turkish poet Turgut Uyar wrote the poem Three Poems For Federico García Lorca including a line in Spanish (obra completas)

The Irish poet Michael Hartnett published an English translation of García Lorca's poetry. García Lorca is also a recurring character in much of Hartnett's poetry, most notably in the poem A Farewell to English..

The Russian poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko wrote the poem "When they murdered Lorca" ("Когда убили Лорку") in which he portrays Lorca as being akin to Don Quixote—an immortal symbol of one's devotion to his ideals and perpetual struggle for them.

Nicole Krauss includes a reference to Lorca in her novel Great House (2010): "It was then that he told me the desk had been used, briefly, by Lorca." (p. 11) The desk is the central metaphor for memory and the burden of inheritance, used throughout the novel. Also see page 13. Krauss also refers to Neruda the poet.

British poet John Siddique wrote "Desire for Sight (After Lorca)" included in Poems from a Northern Soul[75]

Bengali poet Sunil Ganguly wrote a poem "Kobir Mirtyu-Lorca Smarane" (The death of a Poet- In the memory of Lorca)

Erie, Pennsylvania poet Sean Thomas Dougherty published a book of poems titled Nightshift Belonging to Lorca.[76]

Scott Ruescher, author of Sidewalk Tectonics, a 2009 chapbook from Pudding House Publications, won the 2013 Erika Mumford Prize (for poetry about travel and international culture) from the New England Poetry Club for his five-part poem, "Looking for Lorca."

Chilean composer Ariel Arancibia composed in 1968 Responso a García Lorca based on a poem wrote by Óscar Castro Zúñiga shortly after García-Lorca's death. Responso a García Lorca was included in the LP "Homenaje a Óscar Castro Zúñiga" recorded by Los Cuatro de Chile and Hector and Humberto Duvauchelle.

The American composer George Crumb utilizes much of García Lorca's poetry in works such as his Ancient Voices of Children, his four books of Madrigals, and parts of his Makrokosmos. His four books of "Madrigals," for soprano and various instruments including: piccolo, flute, alto flute, harp, vibraphone, percussion, and contrabass, utilizes for its text twelve short segments of Lorca's poetry.

Composer Osvaldo Golijov and playwright David Henry Hwang wrote the one-act opera Ainadamar ("Fountain of Tears") about the death of García Lorca, recalled years later by his friend the actress Margarita Xirgu, who could not save him. It opened in 2003, with a revised version in 2005. A recording of the work released in 2006 on the Deutsche Grammophon label (Catalog #642902) won the 2007 Grammy awards for Best Classical Contemporary Composition and Best Opera Recording.

Finnish modernist composer Einojuhani Rautavaara has composed Suite de Lorca ("Lorca-sarja") and Canción de nuestro tiempo ("Song of our time") for a mixed choir to the lyrics of García Lorca's various poems (1972 and 1993).

The Pogues dramatically retell the story of his murder in the song 'Lorca's Novena' on their Hell's Ditch album.

Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan wrote two of his "Four Spanish Songs" based on the poems "Oda a Salvador Dali" and "Las Seis Cuerdas", premiered by soprano Mariska Setiawan in 2016 accompanied on the piano by the composer.

Composer Dave Soldier adapted multiple Lorca poems to country blues songs in idiomatic English in the Kropotkins' CD, Portents of Love album, which features a hand drawing of Lorca's face on the cover.

French composer Francis Poulenc dedicated his Violin Sonata (1943) to Lorca's memory, and quoted (in French) the first line of his poem ‘Las Seis Cuerdas’ (The Six Strings) - "The guitar makes dreams weep" - at the head of the second movement. He composed his Trois chansons de F Garcia Lorca in 1947.

The French composer Maurice Ohana set to music García Lorca's poem Lament for the death of a Bullfighter(Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías), recorded by the conductor Ataúlfo Argenta in the 1950s

Spanish rock band Marea made a rock version of the poem "Romance de la Guardia Civil española", named "Ciudad de los Gitanos".

In 1986 Leonard Cohen's English translation of the poem Pequeño vals vienés by García Lorca reached No. 1 in the Spanish single charts (as Take This Waltz, music by Cohen). Cohen has described García Lorca as being his idol in his youth, and named his daughter Lorca Cohen for that reason.[82]

Missa Lorca by Italian composer Corrado Margutti (2008) is a choral setting of the Latin Mass text and the poetry of Lorca. U.S. premiere, 2010.

In 1967, composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music seven poems of the Romancero Gitano – translated into Greek by Odysseas Elitis in 1945. This work was premiered in Rome in 1970 under the same title. In 1981, under commission of the Komische Oper in Berlin, the composition was orchestrated as a symphonic work entitled Lorca. In the mid-1990s, Theodorakis rearranged the work as an instrumental piece for guitar and symphony orchestra.[83][84][85]

In 1989, American composer Stephen Edward Dick created new music for Lorca's ballad "Romance Sonambulo", based on the original text, and with permission from Lorca's estate. The piece is set for solo guitar, baritone and flamenco dance, and was performed in 1990 at the New Performance Gallery in San Francisco. The second performance took place in Canoga Park, Los Angeles in 2004.

American composer Geoffrey Gordon composed Lorca Musica per cello solo (2000), utilizing themes from his 1995 three-act ballet The House of Bernarda Alba (1995), for American cellist Elizabeth Morrow.[86] The work was recorded on Morrow's Soliloquy CD on the Centaur label and was featured at the 2000 World Cello Congress. Three suites from the ballet, for chamber orchestra, have also been extracted from the ballet score by the composer.

In 2000 a Greek rock group Onar composed a song based on Lorca's poem " La balada del agua del mar". Teresa Salgueiro from a Portuguese musical ensemble called Madredeus participates reading the poem during the song.

British composer Simon Holt has set Lorca's words to music in Ballad of the Black Sorrow, for five solo singers and instrumental ensemble, and Canciones, for mezzo-soprano and instrumental ensemble. His opera The Nightingale's to Blame is based on Lorca's Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín.

Theatre, film and television based on Lorca

Theatre, film and television based on García Lorca

Federico García Lorca: A Murder in Granada (1976) directed by Humberto López y Guerra and produced by the Swedish Television. In October 1980 the New York Times described the transmission of the film by Spanish Television in June that same year as attracting "one of the largest audiences in the history of Spanish Television".[87]

Playwright Nilo Cruz wrote the surrealistic drama Lorca in a Green Dress about the life, death, and imagined afterlife of García Lorca. The play was first performed in 2003 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Cruz play Beauty of the Father (2010) also features Lorca's ghost as a key character.[88]

British playwright Peter Straughan wrote a play (later adapted as a radio play) based on García Lorca's life, The Ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca Which Can Also Be Used as a Table.

TVE broadcast a six-hour mini-series based on key episodes on García Lorca's life in 1987. British actor Nickolas Grace played the poet, although he was dubbed by a Spanish actor.

Miguel Hermoso's La luz prodigiosa (The End of a Mystery) is a Spanish film based on Fernando Macías' novel with the same name, which examines what might have happened if García Lorca had survived his execution at the outset of the Spanish Civil War.

British Screenwriter Philippa Goslett was inspired by García Lorca's close friendship with Salvador Dalí. The resulting biographical film Little Ashes (2009) depicts the relationship in the 1920s and 1930s between García Lorca, Dalí, and Luis Buñuel.[89]

American playwright Michael Bradford drama, Olives and Blood, produced by Neighborhood Productions at The HERE Art Center/Theatre, June 2012, focuses on the present day trouble one of the supposed murderers of Lorca.

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